Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglasis an American actor, producer, director, and author. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he had his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Iverswith Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s and 1960s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war movies. During a sixty-year acting career, he has appeared in over 90 movies, and in 1960 was responsible for helping to end the Hollywood Blacklist...
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth9 December 1916
CityAmsterdam, NY
A Father. A Son. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
If you want to see a star, don't go to Hollywood. Come to Palm Springs.
He was a very, very great talent and we have lost someone important.
Because I love you, I will be checking up on you, ... You have honored me and I thank all of you.
When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy's questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.
In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail.
Virtue is not photogenic.
The only advantage I have found in being Jewish is that I can be openly anti-Semitic.
Life is like a B-picture script. It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down.
My kids never had the advantages I had. I was born poor.
Unfortunately, once I did learn to smoke, I couldn't stop. I escalated to two packs a day very quickly, and stayed that way for about ten years. When I decided to stop, I adopted the method that my father had used when he quit. He would carry a cigarette in his shirt pocket, and every time he felt like smoking, he would pull out the cigarette and confront it: "Who stronger? You? Me?" Always the answer was the same: "I stronger." Back the cigarette would go, until the next craving. It worked for him, and it worked for me.
The learning process continues until the day you die.
Michael [Douglas] is, I think, a great actor. He's made some very interesting pictures. When he was going to college, I was very proud of him, but when he said, 'Dad, I want to be in a play,' he had a bit part. I went to see it and Michael said, 'Dad, how was I?' I said, 'You were terrible.' I thought he would go on to be a lawyer and in three months, he was in another play and I went and, I must admit, he was great. I think he has been good in everything he's done.
I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.